An Interconnect cable is the patch cable that goes between audio separates. For home use they typcially use "RCA" style connectors. The following post is aimed at those types of cables and not XLR style interconnects which can be found on some home audio components.

Go onto Craigslist, Nextdoor, Ebay, or Facebook Marketplace and look for RG6 75ohm coaxial cable. It's the cable that is run in most houses for cable TV. You might even have this stuff laying around your house in a box somewhere. Either way you can get it for pennies per foot if you look hard enough. There are versions with a solid copper core , or a copper clad steel core. For audio use, either is just fine, but as a personal preference I like to use solid copper core as it's better quality cable. However, it does cost just a bit more, but still cheaper than buying cables in a box store.

Next you'll need RCA compression fittings for RG6: Amazon Link

Then purchase a compression tool and coaxial cutter: Amazon Link

If you have cables with the "F-type" connector on them already, then there are adapters to go to RCA male: Amazon Link

Follow the instructions that come with the tools and enjoy cables that outperform even those that are made of unicorn farts and fairy dust that people with too much money but little sense like to tout. These cables will also last forever as RG6 cable is very tough, especially the solid copper core version. I have cables that are north of 30 years old still in daily use.

The only issue with RG6, it is a stiff cable. So making short runs bend at sharp angles is not an easy thing to do. You will need to come up with a method to keep stereo pairs together, or just run them separately. Plus mark the cables as Left or Right channels. I use either colored heat shrink tubing, or electrical tape for this purpose.

 

Vintage Audio Addict is a great YT channel that I recommend for all Budget Audiophiles to subscribe to.

This video is a dissertation on the work of Peter Aczel. An engineer that lays it out in plain language how audio really works and why "Audiophiles" are wasting their money. I've known about Peter for quite some time and his perspective went a long way in shaping my own in regards to audio equipment.

 

I have a love/ hate relationship with early 90's to early 2000's audio equipment.

This is an Adcom GTP-350, which a decent mid-range stereo pre-amp from 1993. I bought it off of Ebay for $80 and free shipping. It came to me with no left channel and scratchy to non-working pots. So several applications of Deoxit and working the pots they all came back to life. However, the left channel would just now work, EXCEPT for the radio. The radio played normally through both channels. That told me this unit has fallen to the curse of dry/cold solder joints. So I took about 30 minutes and resoldered all the joints in the signal path of both channels.

Then... I ran into my own stupidity... Sometimes I'm just and idiot and using an extremely flawed testing method and a defective external part (USB-C to 1/8" Stereo adapter) I thought I hadn't fixed it. After messing around with it for another 30 minutes, I discovered my mistake... Then discovered the adapter I was using to play music from my phone was defected (if you guess it would not play through the left channel, even on known good equipment you get a cookie.) So I figured all that out finally, as I said, I'm an idiot sometimes, and it's working great.

The plan is to run it for a week or so and make sure nothing else happens. I am contemplating recapping it, but we'll see. If it passes, then it will go up to my living room so I can get my main stereo back to working. Right now I'm running a Marantz receiver I fixed and while I really like it, I like my main stereo even more.

Here is a photo of the work I did today. I started at the inputs (top center of the photo) and just worked my way down. To the left in the photo is the radio section and it's working fine, so I didn't touch it. Also, we don't listen to the radio, so if something does happen to that section I'll just isolate it from the signal path and just leave it.